


The Letters of Your Name

by HugeAlienPie



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Character of Color, Canon Gay Character, Episode: s01e09 Wolf's Bane, M/M, Names, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, cousin Miguel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-29
Updated: 2014-08-29
Packaged: 2018-02-15 06:56:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2219790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HugeAlienPie/pseuds/HugeAlienPie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Name on Danny's wrist looks like a cosmic joke. At least he has his crush on Stiles to tide him over until he meets this Baothghalach guy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Letters of Your Name

**Author's Note:**

> Much of TW fandom (myself included, usually), tends to run with the assumption that Stiles' first name is Polish. But I was thinking about how, in ep. 1.05 ("The Tell"), Sheriff Stilinski says Stiles is named after his _maternal_ grandfather, leaving the field wide open. And while we've never had the slightest indication that Danny's name is anything other than, well, _Danny_ (or maybe Daniel), I liked playing with the possibility that, like Stiles, he adopted a Western Neutral name out of frustration at other people's inability to correctly pronounce his given name.
> 
> Set precanon through ep. 1.09, "Wolf's Bane." Some dialogue taken directly from the infamous "Cousin Miguel" scene of that episode. Written before we learned that Stiles' given name starts with "M."

By the end of his first week in Beacon Hills, Kaniela was telling everyone, including his parents, to call him Danny.

"Why?" his father asked, so disappointed. "You know your name is important to our family."

"Yeah, yeah, I know." Danny was 12 and going through a…spiky time. "Mom's brother defeated a sea monster and saved twenty orphans from certain death, I _know_. But nobody here says it right. The teachers don't even try, and three kids have asked if I'm girl because my name sounds girly. Please, call me Danny."

"Aren't you proud of your culture?" his mother asked, which was a low blow.

"Of course I'm proud," Danny said, "which is why I don't want dumb people butchering the language every day."

"This will make it harder for your soulmate to find you," his mother said. "The name you go by won't match the Name on their arm."

Danny shrugged. For a 12-year old, that argument didn't carry much weight.

His father pulled out the last big gun. "We gave you that name, Kaniela."

"Yeah," Danny said, "but _I_ have to live with it every day."

*

Making friends in a new school was hard, so Danny was excited when Jackson and Lydia took him under their wing. But their friendship had drawbacks, including not being allowed hang out with anyone they deemed unworthy.

Scott McCall was one of the nicest people Danny knew. Stiles Stilinski was cute, smart, funny, and, okay, kind of a jerk, but...amusingly so. Within ten minutes of meeting Stiles in the cafeteria on his first day of school, Danny developed a huge crush on him. But Lydia and Jackson firmly declared Scott and Stiles "not our strata," so friendship with either of them was off the table.

Strangely, both boys were considered prime gossip topics, so although Danny didn't know them, he knew a lot _about_ them. Stiles' dead mother, Scott's drunk FBI agent father who'd moved to San Francisco, and Stiles' mysterious first name.

"It's unpronounceable and Polish," Jackson said when Danny asked about it, seeming to forget that Danny hadn't always been Danny and apparently immune to irony. "It's gotta be. His dad goes by 'Noah,' but I saw his real name once on some papers my dad had at home, and it's like Sizzlesec or something. I mean, it's awful, and it has no vowels."

At the time, Danny just tucked that information away. But it came to mind periodically, often enough that when he got into hacking the next year, he briefly considered accessing Stiles' school records to look for it. Then he got distracted by hacking Coast Guard records to find out if Uncle Kaniela really defeated a sea monster and saved twenty orphans from certain death. Eventually he got busted, and Stiles' name became much less of a concern than staying out of juvie.

*

The day after Danny's 14th birthday, he and Jackson were practicing lacrosse in the Whittemore back yard when a searing pain tore across the inside of Danny's left wrist. He swore and dropped his stick, clutching his hand.

Jackson was at his side in an instant. "Dude, what's going on?"

"I don't know!" He ripped off his glove and stared dumbly at the new mark on his wrist, puffy and red like a new tattoo.

"Holy shit, man," Jackson said, awed, "your Name's coming in."

This was a Big Fucking Deal. The biggest of the big. Danny had pictured this moment a hundred times, and now that it was happening, he felt like, without Jackson here to ground him, he might've passed out from excitement. He sensed Jackson's quiet smugness, too; being with someone when their Name appeared was a rare privilege.

But the longer they stared at it, the Name growing clearer every second, the more Danny panicked.

"What the hell?" Jackson bitched. " _Bowth-g-halak_? Somebody put their fingers on the wrong keys?"

If it were anything other than the Name, Danny would suspect a cruel hoax. But soulmates were biochemically determined, generated by your own body based on—well, there was scientific debate on that point, but there didn't seem to be any single external agent. If Danny was being pranked, it was God's prank, and Danny couldn't do much about that. He rooted through his gear bag for the green wrist cuff his parents gave him when he turned 12 and then got back in the net, putting the Name from his mind as best he could.

Over the next few days, Danny did hours of research. He discovered that "Baothghalach" _was_ a name—a boy's name, thank God. He'd known for a few years that he was only into guys. If his soulmate had been a girl, he would've been happy —you didn't get paired with someone you couldn't be happy with—but it would've been...awkward. He learned that the name was Gaelic; that it was pronounced, against all logic, "beh-hel-lahk;" and that it meant "foolish pride," which seemed like a mean thing to do to a kid. He learned that, unsurprisingly, it was very uncommon in the United States. For sure he didn't know anyone who had it, which was odd, because a Name usually only came in when the person it belonged to was fairly close by.

He fiercely regretted promising his parents he would give up hacking after his arrest. Finding his soulmate would be child's play. He tried to console himself with the thought that if he hadn't met his Baothghalach by the _day_ he turned 18, he would register with a Name-finding service or six. But, God, four years seemed interminable.

*

Stiles turned 15 the summer between eighth and ninth grades. He invited Danny to his party, and Danny wanted to go, but Jackson forbade it.

When they got back to school in the fall, Stiles was wearing a blue wrist cuff, so his Name must've come in over the summer. He seemed disappointed when the teacher got to Danny's name in the roll, like he hadn't heard something he'd been listening for, and he kept _looking_ at Danny.

Danny had no trouble looking back. He wasn't one of those old-fashioned people who thought you should only date your Name. His figured that, when he and his soulmate found each other, at least one of them ought to know what he was doing. He dated. He fooled around. He hadn't had sex, but only because he mostly met guys who were old enough to be skeevy, not because he had any moral objection to the act. If Stiles was into it, hell yeah Danny would be into it, too.

Only instead of asking him out, Stiles kept asking if Danny thought Stiles was attractive to gay guys. The first time, Danny found it endearingly awkward, hoping Stiles was working up to asking if _Danny_ found him attractive. The seventh time he asked, with no next step in sight, Danny wrote Stiles off as a lost cause. Still, when Scott got himself turned into a werewolf sophomore year, and he and Stiles got sucked into the maelstrom of crap that was supernatural life in Beacon County, Danny was man enough to admit he missed the stupid question.

*

Although they had been classmates, teammates, and occasional lab partners since seventh grade, and although Danny had fed his crush with vicarious gossip the entire time, he and Stiles didn't spend much time together outside school activities. So when Stiles sent a brusque text informing Danny that he _would_ come to the Stilinski house at his earliest convenience, Danny hopped to with alacrity—and a bit of terror. He anticipated anything from a declaration of undying love to another hour of grilling as to whether or not he was attractive to gay guys and why.

Danny found Stiles pacing his room in obvious distress, scrubbing his hands over his buzzed brown hair, amber eyes wild with agitation. He also found an incredibly hot, scowling werewolf in a torn and blood-spattered shirt in the corner of his room, but his first priority was Stiles. "Stiles?" he asked cautiously.

"Trace a text for me, Danny-boy." There was something hard to Stiles' voice, an edge that Danny didn't like, that didn't sit right with the Stiles Danny knew. That guy could be casually cruel and unwittingly insensitive, but his meanness was never calculated.

Danny blinked. Something was off. "You want me to do what?"

"Trace a text."

"I came here to do lab work," Danny bluffed, although he didn't entirely believe it. Stiles' text hadn't read like just an invitation to do homework. "That's what lab partners do."

"And we will, once you trace the text." Stiles stood and pushed into Danny's space, somehow managing to loom despite being a couple inches shorter and considerably narrower. "And once you tell me how long you've known we're soulmates and if you were ever going to say anything about it."

Danny flinched away. His mind reeled; it couldn't hold this. "What are you talking about? We are not soulmates, Stiles. Trust me. I would've told you that. The insane mess of a name on my arm isn't yours."

"The Mark doesn't lie, asshole," Stiles said. He yanked the blue cuff off his wrist and thrust his arm up to Danny's face. "Unless you're telling me I should be looking for some other Kaniela around here."

"But..." But the Mark _didn't_ lie. He was staring at his own name, the one even his parents eventually gave up calling him, in graceful letters that seemed to flow over Stiles' wrist like water. "How did you—"

"I looked up your arrest report." Stiles just dropped the words out there, like the staggering invasion of privacy and violation of law didn't matter.

"I—I was 13," Danny said faintly. "They dropped the charges."

"Yeah, but your name's still on it. This name."

"Okay, maybe," Danny said, tugging off his own cuff, "but no way are you Baothghalach."

Stiles reared back, staring at Danny's face, not even glancing at his wrist. "Holy shit, you said it right. No one's said it that well since Mom died. Not even Dad. Not even me."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Danny's mind was a whirling mess. _Stiles_ was Baothghalach? Stiles was his soulmate? Stiles had had his Name for over a year. They could've been together for over a year! "You knew! As soon as you saw your Name you had to know—"

"I _suspected_ ," Stiles corrected instantly. "I mean, what were the odds it wasn't you? And I wanted—oh man, I wanted. But it seemed so—well, you're _you_ , and I'm just…welcome to your first view of how crazy everything is in here, by the way." He waved a hand at his head, and Danny felt genuinely distressed for whatever had happened in Stiles' life to make him dislike himself so much. "It was better to not ask and hold out hope it was you than to ask and find out for sure it wasn't."

Danny didn't know whether to laugh or cry, whether to kiss Stiles or shake him. "Then you don't get to be mad that I didn't connect Baothghalach to you."

Stiles rubbed the back of his neck and looked adorably sheepish. "I'm so disconnected from that name it literally never occurred to me that my soulmate's wrist _wouldn't_ say 'Stiles.'"  

"Well, it doesn't, and I had no idea that name existed before it showed up on my wrist. I've never even heard a teacher say it on the first day of class."

"Because I email my teachers over the summer and beg them not to try." He raised his eyebrows in challenge. "Like you probably do."

Danny nodded. Okay, yeah, fair point. "I thought your real name was Polish. _Everyone_ thinks your real name is Polish. Like your dad's."

Stiles shook his head. "I'm named after my mom's dad, God rest his crotchety Irish soul."

"Baothghalach Stilinski?" Danny asked. Stiles winced, and the werewolf in the corner snorted a laugh. Danny blinked; he'd forgotten he and Stiles weren't alone.

"Do you mind?" Stiles snapped, whirling on the guy. "I'm having an important first bonding moment with my soulmate. Do you know what that's like?"

"Yes," the guy snarled and yanked up the sleeve of his bloodied Henley to reveal an unreadable scar on his wrist.

A pall fell over the room. "Wwellll," Stiles said, "this just got awkward and depressing." Nothing ruined the glow of a meeting your Name match like a bleeding guy with a dead soulmate.

"Who's he, again?" Danny asked.

"Um...my cousin. Miguel." Stiles was the second-worst liar in Beacon Hills, with Scott just barely edging him out.

Danny rolled his eyes. "Your werewolf cousin Miguel?"

Stiles went into spluttering denial mode, waving his arms in a frantic bid to distract from the incoherent b.s. pouring from his mouth. "Cousin Miguel" all but leapt into Danny's face, eyes flashing blue. "What do you know about werewolves?" he demanded around his fangs.

Danny narrowed his eyes and stared at the guy until he reluctantly put away the eyes and fangs, though he didn't retreat. "I know not to walk around this town without some form of wolfsbane on me, so back off."

Stiles exhaled in a shocked rush. "Soulmate o'mine, light of my being, my reason for existence, you and I are going to have a _long_ talk about what you know, how you know it, and how long you've known it. For now, this is Derek Hale, last conscious member of the Hale pack and general failwolf. We're having some trouble with a rogue alpha who kinda wants us all dead. Trace a text for us, honeybear?"

"Promise you'll never call me that again."

"I make no promises," Stiles said defiantly.

Danny rubbed his forehead. Christ. _Stiles Stilinski_ was his soulmate. He'd had a crush on Stiles for years, but being bound to him the rest of his life was something different entirely, something huge and overwhelming that Danny didn't quite know how to process right now. "Okay," he said, "just come here first." Stiles grinned as he caught on to what Danny meant. He moved closer, hands outstretched, and they touched for the first time as soulmates.

Tingling warmth flooded Danny's body  He felt like he was glowing. Stiles _was_ glowing. God, Stiles had always been attractive, but when had he gotten _gorgeous_?

Anyone who said their soulmate "completed them" was an idiot. Danny felt fiercely aware that he already _was_ complete in himself, and all the ways Stiles complemented that. Stiles' fearlessness would encourage Danny to be braver; Danny's patience would encourage Stiles to be more careful. Danny was finesse and Stiles blunt force, and both of those things had their time and place. Danny battled conflicting desires: one to stay in this moment forever, basking in what he and Stiles were learning about each other; the other to let go of Stiles' hands and dive into a life together.

Stiles smiled and squeezed Danny's hands. That made it okay for Danny to let go, step back, and sit down at Stiles' computer, grinning so hard his face ached. For the first time in since his name—since _Stiles'_ name—came in, he felt fully _himself_. "Okay," Danny said as Stiles settled in beside him and Derek managed to both loom and sulk behind them, "I'll need the ISP, the phone number, and the exact time of the text." He'd just found his soulmate. No way was some asshole alpha werewolf going to _kill him_. "Let's get this bastard."

**Author's Note:**

> Let's talk [tumblr](http://hugealienpie.tumblr.com/), shall we?


End file.
